Since the early days of intelligence satellites, aerial surveillance and reconnaissance has been a paramount feature of the intelligence community. Satellite reconnaissance, however, suffers from many drawbacks. For example, satellites are very costly to manufacture, deploy and operate. In addition, in order to monitor a particular area on the ground, the position of a geosynchronous orbit satellite may need to be changed. The process of changing the position of a satellite is costly and cumbersome. Furthermore, some satellites are not configured to provide continuous high resolution video monitoring of an area. In some cases, the satellites are configured to only provide high resolution still images.
Other aerial reconnaissance vehicles include manned or unmanned aerial vehicles, such as intelligence aircraft, e.g., unmanned drones. However, these aerial vehicles also suffer from drawbacks. For example, the length of time an aerial vehicle can remain above a particular area is limited to amount of fuel and/or battery charge onboard the vehicle. In addition, operational costs of these vehicles can also be high and prohibitive of widespread use. In fact, the cost of operation alone is a limiting factor for widespread use of these vehicles in modern reconnaissance operations.
Therefore, a low cost intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system including one or several aerial vehicles is needed to provide useful intelligence in widespread reconnaissance operations.